hi everyone. This is your Tampa Realtor Lance Mohr and in this video I'm
just going get right to it because this involves wire fraud. I had some wire
fraud that happened to a client of mine a few days ago and it was really
elaborate it was pretty high-tech and in the degree that they went to to do this
i just haven't really heard of it before so i wanted to bring this up to you
because i know a lot of home buyers out there are gonna probably be losing a lot
of money due to this because it just looks real so i'm gonna go over that and
i'm gonna do a screen shot video showing you the email so you get an idea of what
was sent to look out for this now i just want to say before I get into that if
you're buying a home and you wire money somewhere always always verifying where
you're wiring the money if you're getting the wiring instructions from an
attorney or a title company it should be encrypted so in other words it just
shouldn't be an email with the wire instructions in the body of the email or
as a PDF attachment or a word attachment if you see this run for the hills always
call up whoever sent it to you or wherever the money's supposed to be
going say a title company and verifying this with them if it's a builder
sometimes the Builder reps will actually hand out the wiring instructions for
their title company or for wherever it's supposed to go so you just you want to
make sure that you check everything out if it seems a little suspicious
boys take caution and always always go ahead and make sure and verify that
you're sending it to the right place and then when we get done with the end of
the video I'm going to give you a little tip and what I do how to protect what I
have so this doesn't really happen to me anyhow so let's just jump right into it
and here's the screenshot of the emails okay so here's the email and what what
ended up happening I had my buyer get this email and he
contacted me and I didn't know what the heck he was talking about so I picked up
the phone called him and he was explaining to me how I sent him an email
to wire the money and I asked him to send the emails to me so this is the
first email and then what happened when it came over to him it only said the
from and only how to Lance Moore here it didn't have this whatever email this is
that they use as comcast.net right here so it only had Lance Moore and it
basically just said good morning you can see it's not personalized the $18,000
should be wired to the title company's commercial trust account I will send you
wiring instructions once you would know its receipt of this email by read um by
replying and then it says I have I'm busy and I have limited access to my
phone so can you send me an email because they obviously didn't want him
to pick up the phone and call me and then they put thanks Lance more
keller williams and then my license number my broker number so obviously
that is a little weird right there because that isn't how any of my
signatures go now this was the first email right here okay so this is the
second email it came over it has the property address on it looks like it's
coming from me this one came over about 15 minutes later in the morning and it
said see the wiring instructions below you know and it told him to wire the
money over Chase Bank and Pasadena California gave the routing number now
here's where this where I knew something was really weird going on with this he
recognized it when he saw the Pasadena but this was Olin our home that the
buyer was buying and if you look at the account name in the beginning and at the
end it has the beginning says Eagle and the end says mortgage so they know when
our mortgage company is Eagle mortgage now there's three ways this could happen
it could have someone could have hacked into my computer and got to my email and
saw everything going on with myself with the buyer with onr and everything but it
went too then my email I only use my laptop computer at home and work and I
have a virtual private network so unless they're getting through military-grade
encryption it's not my computer the second option would have been Lennar I
highly doubt it was Lennar and I talked this over with Alan our rep just because
of the protocol that that they'll have on their on their computers in their
office so the the buyer doesn't have a computer home if he needs to use one
he'll use his neighbor's but he has a mobile device and I think that's where
it happened I think what happened is someone hacked into his mobile device
got into his email and started a looking over everything this is really scary so
I you know again thank goodness he had the whereabouts in the sense to pick up
the phone and call me and he also picked up the phone and called the Builder rep
and talked to her and she's like no I have no idea why items would said that
then I talked to him now when I talked to him and I asked him to send me this
you know obviously it's not me right away it gave some junk email address at
comcast.net I knew when he forwarded to me it would say the email I did tell him
he should be he should send this to the FBI because it's basically a federal
issue wire fraud so they're trying to get his money the one thing that I would
recommend that I recommended to him and I I happen to my computer and I
recommend it to a lot of people is to get what I have it's a Virtual Private
Network it's a VPN there's a lot of companies out there you know and what
this does and you can read up on it watch youtube videos on it but it
basically just shields you from someone wanting to get into your computer to get
your information so it basically encrypts everything with military-grade
encryption it's really really really tough if
someone would would be able to try to crack it so I don't personally use my
phone for business much other than calling and has calling some some
pictures some videos but I don't do any email on my telephone or key save any
accounts or anything for this reason now if I did I would get a Virtual Private
Network on my phone as well but I don't so I hope that helped you again I'm not
here to pitch a haven't you get a VPN I just think it's a really good and safe
thing to get I would definitely do it you know there's just a lot of wire
fraud going on right now a lot of it's just spam email where they're just you
know sending out hundreds of thousands emails hoping they catch someone who's
buying a home I would just ask you a favor if you can and anybody that you
know that's looking at buying a home send them this video because you don't
want them to get taken to the bank and there's been people out in a Tampa area
that had been on the news that have been out 51,000 dollars due to wire fraud and
I certainly don't want that to happen to you I don't want it to happen to anybody
you know family friends co-workers anybody so anybody you know looking to
buy a home share this with them please if you have any questions about that
real estate market or Tampa don't hesitate to give me a call have a
wonderful day thank you
you